Not so long ago, qualitative research by necessity relied on in-person focus groups and ethnographies. But over the past years, advances in technology have made it possible to conduct a broad spectrum of qualitative research utilizing exclusively online tools.
With these advances, the umbrella of available options has grown so large that it can sometimes be challenging to decide which would be most effective to achieve the research objectives. To help clarify the decision-making process, we’ve compiled a review of the qual methodologies that we regularly leverage to help brands learn from their consumers.
Short-Term Communities
Approach: Similar to a social media platform like Facebook, a Short-Term Community is a digital platform specifically designed for qualitative research. Consumers are recruited nationally to participate in 3-14 days of communities where they engage in activities ranging from 20-40 minutes per day. Activities are varied and utilize assignments like video posts, short form responses, quizzes, and image collection. The possibilities are literally endless and new features are released regularly.
Benefits: The community platform allows for a wide range of topic types which lend to multiple layers of questions to unearth rich insights. Short-Term Communities are also moderated, so there are opportunities to ask participants follow-up questions. This method is excellently suited for studies where lots of detailed information on a variety of subtopics is needed from the same group of consumers.
Mobile Missions
Approach: Consumers are recruited to complete tasks such as shopping for specific items, attending events, or visiting retail locations to share their in-the-moment observations. Similar to Short-Term Communities, Mobile Missions take place over several days (though not typically weeks). Unlike Short-Term Communities, the primary goal of Mobile Missions is to complete a task that is usually outside of the respondent’s home and which requires the participant to use their phone to capture and log their experience.
Benefits: Mobile Missions are often associated with retail studies and provide an essential view into the customer experience as it is happening real-time (versus asking the customer to recall a past experience). In-the-moment observations provide greater levels of accuracy than recall when the details of a process or experience are critical to understand.
Diary Studies
Approach: Consumers log daily diary entries on a digital platform to capture a variety of experiences and emotions related to a specific behavior or occasion (e.g., logging an entry after eating a snack or after selecting an outfit for the day). Typically, the diary entry is designed to give the participant specific prompts to answer, such as the time of day, how they were feeling, context around the event, their decision-making process, etc.
Benefits: This methodology is frequently used to explore the nuances of consumers’ interactions and relationships with a specific brand or product, providing longitudinal cataloging of a variety of use cases over an extended period of time. It’s also particularly useful for studies that cover more sensitive topic areas since this method is asynchronous and unmoderated.
Video Blogs
Approach: Similar to Diary Studies, consumers who participate in a Video Blog study log entries each day. Instead of utilizing text responses, consumers upload short (1-3 minutes) videos of themselves responding to question prompts. In addition to collecting videos of a participant answering questions, Video Blogs can also prompt people to capture footage of spaces within their home. Unlike Mobile Missions, Video Blogs are typically at home, but they can be used in B2B research to capture videos in a participant’s work environment.
Benefits: The footage is useful for creating clips to share with stakeholders. Similar to Diary Studies, Video Blogs are asynchronous and unmoderated, but they are less time-consuming for participants to complete since they require little to no typing. For this reason, they are very beneficial for research with respondents who don’t have a lot of time to participate in a study, like working moms.
Interviews & Focus Groups
Approach: Similar to Zoom or Facetime for personal use, live-streaming video platforms are leveraged to facilitate qualitative interviews and focus groups. These platforms have a virtual backroom similar to the behind-the-glass experience in a live focus group facility. This feature allows multiple viewers to observe the conversation between the moderator and the participants in real-time without being seen by the participants. Virtual platforms have capabilities for both stimulus-sharing (pictures, slides, videos, websites, etc.) and evaluation (polling, circling, highlighting, etc.).
Benefits: Live-moderated research is usually the best method for topics that benefit from back-and-forth conversation. At the same time, virtual Interviews & Focus Groups offer a lower-cost alternative to in-person research while allowing participants and viewers to join from the comfort of their own space (home or office). These research platforms also have features that allow for video-clip creation, which can be very helpful with creating quick highlight reels to support findings.
We love talking with clients about which methods would best achieve their unique qualitative research objectives. If you’d like to bounce some ideas around, feel free to reach out!